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Arsenic Lupin posted:Absolutely nobody is arguing that Holmes got money "for the sake of diversity alone". That's a straw man. What I am saying is that big-league investing is amazingly cargo cult. I think it was Andreessen (if not, it was somebody equally famous) who said that they're looking for people who remind them of Mark Zuckerberg. They mean that literally -- young, college dropout, expensive school, the right kind of scruffy clothes. Holmes fit this template perfectly, with the bonus that she was a woman. VCs are well aware of the resentment within Silicon Valley of the lack of representation of women and of non-white, non-Asian entrepeneurs. VCs' narrative is that "well, we just haven't seen the right woman/non-white/non-Asian person". Elizabeth Holmes let them reassure themselves that hey, they really did fund women when the right one came along.
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Sep 6, 2016 17:45
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Absolutely nobody is arguing that Holmes got money "for the sake of diversity alone". That's a straw man. What I am saying is that big-league investing is amazingly cargo cult. I think it was Andreessen (if not, it was somebody equally famous) who said that they're looking for people who remind them of Mark Zuckerberg. They mean that literally -- young, college dropout, expensive school, the right kind of scruffy clothes. Holmes fit this template perfectly, with the bonus that she was a woman. VCs are well aware of the resentment within Silicon Valley of the lack of representation of women and of non-white, non-Asian entrepeneurs. VCs' narrative is that "well, we just haven't seen the right woman/non-white/non-Asian person". Elizabeth Holmes let them reassure themselves that hey, they really did fund women when the right one came along. Don't forget that her family was connected up the wazoo, and that helped her get initial investment. The narrative explains more about why she got so much attention from the media than why she got big name investment. She could've been an old white guy and still ended up with a lot of funding, but someone else would've been hyped up to the media.
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Sep 6, 2016 17:48
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Arsenic Lupin posted:None of the facts in the story stand alone. They combine. Investors wanted the Next Big Thing. They wanted a young, college-dropout, brilliant entrepeneur. They wanted a medical Facebook. So when a young, good-looking, Stanford drop-out who modeled herself on Steve Jobs came along, they were easy prey. It's no different than any other hustle: you want to look like the sort of person the mark expects. I feel a little sorry for Holmes. As you say the SV model is to throw ridiculous cash at college-aged "visionaries", people who's brains literally haven't finished maturing. Holmes couldn't legally drink alcohol in California when she founded Theranos, but receiving millions in investment capital from cargo-cult enablers was totally fine. She's old enough now to no longer get the benefit of the doubt and still hasn't changed her story, so by all means lock her away (assuming the FDA still does that). Nocturtle fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Sep 6, 2016 |
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Sep 6, 2016 17:49
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The FDA still does that, but it's not clear that they will in this context- they usually do it for product contamination that kills people. I think the last one was a peanut butter CEO.
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Sep 6, 2016 18:04
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Non Serviam posted:EDIT: As for VCs not finding women. I don't know, maybe it IS true that they haven't found the right ones to fund, in the sense that they don't see their tech or apps as profitable (as Theranos or uBeam would be, if they actually worked). I have a hard time imagining any VC would pass the opportunity to fund an all-gay, Muslim, Transexual, fat-positive, wheelchair-bound firm, if they believed they'd make millions off of it. That's a fundamental misconception that's going to lead you astray every time. Markets are made up of human beings, and human beings are not rational. They believe whatever their biases tell them is true, and the more they feed into a bias the truer it feels. Rich men leave money on the table all the time because the person who was going to make it for them made them uncomfortable, or was simply invisible to them. It's incredibly easy to set up a self-perpetuating cycle. "I'm not going to fund this minority's startup because uhh... [I am biased against them]... they're no good!" and then the next guy comes along and says "See, minority startups are no good. If they were then people would be funding them!"
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Sep 6, 2016 18:13
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:That's a fundamental misconception that's going to lead you astray every time. Markets are made up of human beings, and human beings are not rational. They believe whatever their biases tell them is true, and the more they feed into a bias the truer it feels. Rich men leave money on the table all the time because the person who was going to make it for them made them uncomfortable, or was simply invisible to them. It's incredibly easy to set up a self-perpetuating cycle. "I'm not going to fund this minority's startup because uhh... [I am biased against them]... they're no good!" and then the next guy comes along and says "See, minority startups are no good. If they were then people would be funding them!" I think that you might have misunderstood me though. I didn't mean that VCs were right in their approach, only that they don't see their tech as profitable. Keep in mind these are people who throw money at absolutely random poo poo. They're like kickstarter backers with a much larger wallet. Having said that, I fully agree with you in regards to personal biases. People fool themselves into thinking "I'm not that person" and come up with justifications for otherwise poo poo behavior.
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Sep 6, 2016 18:16
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Nocturtle posted:The employee cafeteria served Kool-Aid that day. The Flavor-Aid people must laugh their asses off as to how the Kool-Aid brand always takes the heat. Seriously, how does a nineteen-year-old manage to convince people to invest in a fancy blood-testing device she apparently invented when she has no scientific credentials whatsoever? Inspector Gesicht fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Sep 6, 2016 |
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Sep 6, 2016 18:27
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Nice. Unpaid internships for those with an MD or PhD and an outstanding academic track record.quote:Biotechnology Equity Research Intern (M.D. or Ph.D. preferred) at a boutique investment bank
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Sep 6, 2016 19:04
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cowofwar posted:Nice. Unpaid internships for those with an MD or PhD and an outstanding academic track record. What do you mean unpaid? Can you really put a price on getting to work with opinion leaders? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZBKX-6Gz6A
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Sep 6, 2016 19:17
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Inspector Gesicht posted:The Flavor-Aid people must laugh their asses off as to how the Kool-Aid brand always takes the heat. East Coast VCs got conned by a whiz kid! But seriously though why did this chick need 4 body guards? Did Steve Jobs even have that many?
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Sep 6, 2016 19:20
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Inspector Gesicht posted:The Flavor-Aid people must laugh their asses off as to how the Kool-Aid brand always takes the heat.  (but I prefer to believe it was Flavor Aid and their obscurity let them, well, get away with murder.)
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Sep 6, 2016 19:25
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fits my needs posted:Did Steve Jobs even have that many? Yes.
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Sep 6, 2016 19:30
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cowofwar posted:Nice. Unpaid internships for those with an MD or PhD and an outstanding academic track record.
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Sep 6, 2016 19:35
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pangstrom posted:This is really bizarre. I-bankers being I-bankers, your coworkers are almost guaranteed to consider the person working to be a worthless idiot. My guess (based on guessing) is that she believes in some variant of the "if you imagine it, you can make it happen" idea. Just be smart and prepared and BELIEEEEEVE and it will all come together. This is, once again, the story of Google, and Facebook, and Apple. The problem is that it is also the story of thousands of startups that you never heard of and never will. She didn't need an exit strategy, because make yourself into Steve Jobs and Apple will surely follow. The board was set up to be a board she could control; she hired employees into silos and forbade them to talk to one another; and she was all set to be Steve Jobs II, the megalomaniac who controlled every detail. The problem is that Steve Jobs was a mad controlling rear end in a top hat who also had *taste* and who understood the technology. Having excellent taste is irrelevant to medical testing, even though Theranos did indeed have a very pretty box. Like I said, cargo cult. Imitate success hard enough and you will succeed. Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Sep 6, 2016 |
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Sep 6, 2016 19:38
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She also has a really good crazy eyes going depending on the photographer's mood I guess. Though I think she has much to work on to be on the Rick Scott level.
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Sep 6, 2016 20:05
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Arsenic Lupin posted:The interesting thing that may or may not come out in the Theranos postmortems, is what was Holmes's exit strategy? If she was a con artist, she had a lot of completely illiquid shares.
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Sep 6, 2016 20:23
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Subjunctive posted:Yes. But not always, and definitely not while walking around inside his own company's headquarters.
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Sep 6, 2016 20:58
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Arsenic Lupin posted:The interesting thing that may or may not come out in the Theranos postmortems, is what was Holmes's exit strategy? If she was a con artist, she had a lot of completely illiquid shares. There's also a cargo-cultishness in the press coverage. The early articles are absolutely fawning, with nobody asking questions about clinical trials and FDA approval. They just took the Theranos marketing materials at face value. It may be that the coverage was coming from journalists specialising in Silicon Valley startups, rather than biomedical topics. Of course it may also just be due to the decline of investigative journalism. I don't really think she is/was a con artist, though, in the sense that the Enron execs didn't really think they were con artists either.
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Sep 6, 2016 21:24
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Lead out in cuffs posted:I don't really think she is/was a con artist, though, in the sense that the Enron execs didn't really think they were con artists either. Whoa you're right. Probably the worst and most dangerous of con arts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn_PSJsl0LQ
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Sep 6, 2016 21:32
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e_angst posted:But not always, and definitely not while walking around inside his own company's headquarters.
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Sep 6, 2016 21:51
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I think the thing that mystifies (or maybe impresses, in a perverse way) me the most is that Theranos had a large number of smart, highly-paid, reasonably intelligent people working for them, and it doesn't seem that they ever pieced together that the product they were working on every day was complete snake oil. Obviously their culture of paranoia and compartmentalization contributed to this, but still you'd think that something like that would have been hard to conceal.
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Sep 6, 2016 22:08
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blah_blah posted:I think the thing that mystifies (or maybe impresses, in a perverse way) me the most is that Theranos had a large number of smart, highly-paid, reasonably intelligent people working for them, and it doesn't seem that they ever pieced together that the product they were working on every day was complete snake oil. Obviously their culture of paranoia and compartmentalization contributed to this, but still you'd think that something like that would have been hard to conceal. I'd be willing to bet that a large number of them absolutely knew their product was garbage but either (1) were hoping that someone could fix it, or (2) really just needed a paycheck and were waiting for their own exit strategies to develop. Also, potential of (3) knew the thing was a "work in progress" but had no idea what the biz side of their company was claiming it could already do. If it's this obvious a disaster from the outside, the scientists and engineers absolutely knew it (and probably a lot more that we'll never get to see).
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Sep 6, 2016 22:18
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blah_blah posted:I think the thing that mystifies (or maybe impresses, in a perverse way) me the most is that Theranos had a large number of smart, highly-paid, reasonably intelligent people working for them, and it doesn't seem that they ever pieced together that the product they were working on every day was complete snake oil. Obviously their culture of paranoia and compartmentalization contributed to this, but still you'd think that something like that would have been hard to conceal. Where was the expertise though? I get the impression they had a very skilled engineering staff, but their biomedical side seemed extremely thin (at least going by their board). I'm not sure they even had a single pathologist.
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Sep 6, 2016 22:29
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Buckwheat Sings posted:Whoa you're right. Probably the worst and most dangerous of con arts. I'm sure that soon she became completely aware of the fact that she was conning people, but it probably started off as "I'm sure I can get this done! I have the will!  "
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Sep 6, 2016 22:38
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Non Serviam posted:I'm sure that soon she became completely aware of the fact that she was conning people, but it probably started off as "I'm sure I can get this done! I have the will! This was me on every other college project. Though at least no one died.
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Sep 6, 2016 22:47
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Inspector Gesicht posted:This was me on every other college project. Though at least no one died. Theranos is literally her college project.
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Sep 6, 2016 22:50
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Nocturtle posted:I feel a little sorry for Holmes. As you say the SV model is to throw ridiculous cash at college-aged "visionaries", people who's brains literally haven't finished maturing. Holmes couldn't legally drink alcohol in California when she founded Theranos, but receiving millions in investment capital from cargo-cult enablers was totally fine. She's old enough now to no longer get the benefit of the doubt and still hasn't changed her story, so by all means lock her away (assuming the FDA still does that). Never feel bad for the scions of the powerful. They have handlers if they need them, but most of them do the Icarus thing with other people's money in place of wings.
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Sep 6, 2016 22:51
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Sundae posted:I'd be willing to bet that a large number of them absolutely knew their product was garbage but either (1) were hoping that someone could fix it, or (2) really just needed a paycheck and were waiting for their own exit strategies to develop. Also, potential of (3) knew the thing was a "work in progress" but had no idea what the biz side of their company was claiming it could already do. The start-up sector attracts people like conmen taret people, only instead of targeting mostly elderly uninformed people the start-up sector attracts young advanced degree people who buy into the idea 100% and will live out of their car to work for the company after they 'loaned' their entire savings to the CEO to help with this one payment that the regulators were jamming him up on. That girl who got fired for her public tantrum/email to the YELP CEO decided she had to leave LA, move to one of the most expensive places on Earth (going in to debt to finance the whole thing), get her own fancy apartment, and then whine online about how hard it is for people to live in the Bay area.
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Sep 6, 2016 23:24
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Non Serviam posted:I disagree with the lack of intermediaries. Editors and curators should get paid, and they serve a valuable role. The issue is that the rates are prohibitive for most universities. They generally don't pay their reviewers, who are subject matter experts and usually working academics. No, I have no idea how this became commonplace and it's what I mean by a next-level scam that doesn't actually add a ton of value but extracts crazy rents all the same. Yes, there's some value in arranging for stuff to be printed in a book, but that's kind of a waste of paper nowdays.
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Sep 6, 2016 23:33
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blah_blah posted:I think the thing that mystifies (or maybe impresses, in a perverse way) me the most is that Theranos had a large number of smart, highly-paid, reasonably intelligent people working for them, and it doesn't seem that they ever pieced together that the product they were working on every day was complete snake oil. Obviously their culture of paranoia and compartmentalization contributed to this, but still you'd think that something like that would have been hard to conceal. Remember Enron?
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Sep 6, 2016 23:50
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Theranos is literally her college project. I'm still amazed that Holmes got this far without A) showing rigorous research that could lead to a viable product B) without showing a working prototype today This bitch isn't in jail yet
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Sep 6, 2016 23:53
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This woman's father had a loving IV in his name, everyone related to these people for three generations should be shot on principle.
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Sep 6, 2016 23:55
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namaste faggots posted:I'm still amazed that Holmes got this far without So. The brightest guys in the room (in theory) trusted their own instincts rather than available expertise. That never happens in Silicon Valley. 
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Sep 7, 2016 00:00
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Almost none of the VCs were from Silicon Valley, AIUI. (But I do enjoy giving my friend at DFJ poo poo about it.)
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Sep 7, 2016 00:04
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Subjunctive posted:Almost none of the VCs were from Silicon Valley, AIUI. (But I do enjoy giving my friend at DFJ poo poo about it.)
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Sep 7, 2016 00:20
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Non Serviam posted:I disagree with the lack of intermediaries. Editors and curators should get paid, and they serve a valuable role. The issue is that the rates are prohibitive for most universities. Interestingly, the situation with publishers is changing in some disciplines. More and more, instead of publishing in journals, academics will put their papers up on an open server and let their audience review it. Arsenic Lupin posted:If any of the venture capitalists had asked somebody with a medical degree if this were possible, they'd have backed away hastily, just as did Holmes's college professor. It's apparently (I am but lowly software person, this is hearsay) immediately obvious that you can't get good data for most tests from a fingerprick, because capillary blood is not representative of bloodstream blood -- some blood components flat-out can't squeeze through the series of tubes. One thing I'm curious about is exactly how many technological hurdles they needed to overcome to make her idea work. You mention the issue with capillary size, I think the article mentions blood cells getting shredded, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were some issues with protein detection and measurement as well. Getting accurate measurements from extremely small amounts of sample isn't always doable with current technology.
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Sep 7, 2016 00:43
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Arsenic Lupin posted:If any of the venture capitalists had asked somebody with a medical degree if this were possible, they'd have backed away hastily, just as did Holmes's college professor. It's apparently (I am but lowly software person, this is hearsay) immediately obvious that you can't get good data for most tests from a fingerprick, because capillary blood is not representative of bloodstream blood -- some blood components flat-out can't squeeze through the series of tubes. Yeah I'm in computational biology, but I work in and around pathology a fair bit and have a degree in biochemistry. The thing that got me was their claim that they can do 70 different tests on the same vial of blood. While I don't believe that this is necessarily impossible (eg you can test for mutations with ludicrously small amounts of material due to the miracle of PCR), I can see that each of those tests would need to be tailored individually to work at those volumes. And that means solving substantial engineering problems unique to each, and then proving accuracy and getting FDA approval through large enough sample clinical trials for each test. You would also need to accept that some of them just wouldn't be possible to do accurately, and work with what you could do. Again, this is not impossible, and with the amount of venture capital they raised, it might even have been doable. But they were claiming to do all 70 tests with that little input material, to the extent of selling the tests to Walgreens, after absolutely zero validation of any of the tests. That's obvious vapourware / criminal negligence territory. PS: I don't think the size-of-components thing is true for capillary blood. There are tests for things like LDLs from capillary blood, and those are really big. That's not to say you wouldn't need to do a separate, detailed study to prove the accuracy of each test, though.
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Sep 7, 2016 00:45
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Adventure Pigeon posted:with current technology. That's the whole game, right there.
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Sep 7, 2016 00:57
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Munkeymon posted:They generally don't pay their reviewers, who are subject matter experts and usually working academics. No, I have no idea how this became commonplace and it's what I mean by a next-level scam that doesn't actually add a ton of value but extracts crazy rents all the same. Yes, there's some value in arranging for stuff to be printed in a book, but that's kind of a waste of paper nowdays. Curators also serve another role. In the case of law, they are indeed making concordances between case law, summarizing , scanning evidence, etc. (at least that's what I've accessed in westlaw). In other disciplines, editorial board pick the unpaid reviewers at least.. I think money should be made. The amounts are just obscene right now.
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Sep 7, 2016 00:57
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Yeah I'm in computational biology, but I work in and around pathology a fair bit and have a degree in biochemistry. The thing that got me was their claim that they can do 70 different tests on the same vial of blood. While I don't believe that this is necessarily impossible (eg you can test for mutations with ludicrously small amounts of material due to the miracle of PCR), I can see that each of those tests would need to be tailored individually to work at those volumes. And that means solving substantial engineering problems unique to each, and then proving accuracy and getting FDA approval through large enough sample clinical trials for each test. You would also need to accept that some of them just wouldn't be possible to do accurately, and work with what you could do. Again, this is not impossible, and with the amount of venture capital they raised, it might even have been doable. But they were claiming to do all 70 tests with that little input material, to the extent of selling the tests to Walgreens, after absolutely zero validation of any of the tests. That's obvious vapourware / criminal negligence territory. What loophole would have kept the FDA from coming down on them like a thundercloud as soon as Walgreens advertised their tests?
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Sep 7, 2016 01:20
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